This will be my seventh trip to Little Pine State Park. While it’s true I always look forward to my hundred mile races, I’m especially excited for this year’s ES100. I’m coming off two amazing events and my fingers are crossed that the Summer of Phil can continue for one more race.
The Dream Race
I’m not sure if I’m finally getting better at choosing a Dream Race goal or whether I’ve just gotten lucky recently. Here’s how I’m thinking about my ES100 Dream Race:
- Goal time – 28 hours
- Pacing – Even 16:18 miles right from the start
- Pacing slightly modified to account for bigger hills
My goal time is most assuredly aggressive. My best time was 30:20 in 2022 and last year I was over 2 hours slower than that. I really don’t know what happened there so I’m just going to ignore it. Never happened. Haha. I think my overall fitness is in line with prior years so normally would target something more reasonable like 30 hours. Bah. Screw reasonable – this is Eastern States!
In all seriousness, I’m not being completely delusional here (just mostly?). While my times steadily improved through 2022, I’ve never had strong finishes. My hope is that I can use my recent breakthrough on even pacing to move much quicker in the second half of the race when the course gets easier. In 2022, I ran the second half of the course 3 hours slower (!) than the first half even though it’s got 1,000-1,500 less feet of elevation gain. So the thinking is to invest about 30 minutes of time in the first half to save myself three hours in the second half.
That’s the theory. Here’s how I’m planning to implement this in practice:
I’m planning on spending two minutes in aid stations except the first and last ones which will be very quick gas and go stops. I’ll be a little longer in crew accessible ASs (3 minutes) and then planning on 5 minutes at Tombs Flat as I swap headlamps and possibly change clothes. I’ve never been the fastest runner so I’ve always tried to save time by minimizing time spent in aid stations.
I want to bank effort and not time through Hyner. To invest time in keeping my effort low with the thought (hope? prayer?) being that this will let me run more after Dry Run. And not just a little bit more, but run anything that’s not straight up. My mindset is going to be that I’d rather be 10 minutes slower than target to Dry Run with the ability to pick up my effort at this point than to get in there 10 minutes early and barely hanging on.
Wildcards
Weather. This is a wildcard in any hundred miler, but could be more of an issue this year at Eastern States. Normally you get heat and humidity, however this could be a wet year. I’ve been spending the past ten days bouncing between Weather.com and Accuweather extended forecasts. One day the forecast has a couple hours of light rain, the next day shows 10 hours with several severe thunderstorms. Most people would happily trade heat for rain/cooler temperatures. Unfortunately on this course, that dramatically slows things down (especially on the technical descents) and tires you out.
Training/fitness. I feel like I’m in as good of shape as prior years, but it’s always hard to accurately pinpoint. On the plus side, I’ll end up running about a hundred more miles in the 100 days leading into the race than the past couple years (750 vs. 650). On the negative side, my vert in July has been quite lacking (15k feet vs. 28-35k past two years). Another consideration is I’ve done hundred mile races in each of the past two months and have actually run quite a bit in the second half of each (vs. my normal shuffle/slog). Heck, I ran more in the back 50 at Viaduct than I did in the first 50. In the ultra fitness equation, does more miles offset less vert? Is less vert counterbalanced by the training stimulus of running a lot late in a recent hundred? Or are all three of these things completely offset by something I’m not even considering?
Final Thoughts
Good grief am I excited for this race. You’d never know that this’ll be the fourth time this year I’ve run the distance or the 7th time at this race. My poor little tummy is already doing flips and we’re still days away! If I was asked to handicap my finish time, I’d probably put the over/under at 29.5 hours in normal ES100 weather. That’s not going to stop me from executing my pacing strategy above and targeting a 28 hour finish though. I’m still hopeful that I can build on my recent race successes. I didn’t get into ultras to dream small. Frankly, I don’t think anyone who attempts hundreds is capable of such a thing. People think those of us who run hundreds are insane, but they can’t fully comprehend the truly crazy part. It’s not that we sign up for these races thinking we can accomplish such an absurd goal. It’s that we think that despite all the prevailing evidence to the contrary. Over the past ten years and sixty some odd events, I have yet to achieve my A goal in a race. Not once. Time after time after time I have fallen short (as recently as 4 weeks ago!). And yet. And yet. . . I continue to believe I have it in me.
Dream Big or Go Home!
It’s the Summer of Phil! You got this!